


Blindsided

by mortalboykings



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Artist Baekhyun, Disabled Character, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 03:00:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6139042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalboykings/pseuds/mortalboykings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is later, and Chanyeol regrets this a lot.</p><p>Baekhyun is stumbling around the bar, spilling his drink on strangers and trying to dance, but the dancing is more like awkward swaying and doing just that is hard enough for him to manage without falling over, he’s already that drunk, and it’s not even eight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Day Of

Baekhyun takes a drag from the cigarette dangling loosely between his fingers and throws himself back onto the couch. Puts the burning end of the cigarette against his tongue to put it out, and tosses it onto the mahogany coffee table. Shouts at the top of his lungs. His voice echoes off the walls of his nearly empty studio apartment. 

Chanyeol sits to the side, arms crossed over his chest and he doesn’t say anything, figures that it’s best to let his friend have his breakdown (because this happens at least once a day).

“Your color scheme is nice,” Chanyeol tries, scanning the canvas splayed on an easel in front of his friend. Different greys and blues and purples cover it, but no picture can be seen clearly from it.

“It’s not  _ art _ .”

“It’s not nothing.”

Baekhyun looks like he might start yelling again, seems to decide against it, and looks expectantly at Chanyeol.

“Let’s get drunk,” he says, but he’s already getting up, sliding on his leather jacket, before he’s even gotten the sentence out.

“You have a showcase tomorrow.” Chanyeol gets up, slightly panicking, knowing that Baekhyun’s mind is already set on going and he won’t be able to stop him.

“Chanyeol, you don’t have to try and convince me to get drunk.”

“I’m not trying to conv-”

“Are you coming or not?”

Chanyeol breathes in heavily and follows Baekhyun out the door.  _ I'm going to regret this later. _

_ * _

It is later, and Chanyeol regrets this a lot.

Baekhyun is stumbling around the bar, spilling his drink on strangers and trying to dance, but the dancing is more like awkward swaying and doing just that is hard enough for him to manage without falling over, he's already _that_ drunk, and it's not even eight.  


Baekhyun tries, at one point, to pull Chanyeol up to dance with him. Chanyeol only laughs nervously and shakes off his friend’s grip.

“Chanyeol, please. You’re being a shitty partner in crime right now.”

“We’re not even doing anything illegal.”

Baekhyun whines, like he’s a child, and not a twenty-three-year-old man, and Chanyeol gives in helplessly, standing and joining him.

Some heavy metal song is playing from the jukebox, but Baekhyun screams, “Slow dance!” and clings to his taller companion. And cue more awkward swaying. At one point close to the end of the song, Baekhyun kisses Chanyeol sloppily. He tastes like cigarettes and vodka, and it’s not entirely unpleasant, but Chanyeol wishes that this could be happening under literally any other circumstances.

Because Baekhyun isn’t really Baekhyun when he’s drunk.

To be more specific - when he’s drunk, he starts to develop this weird sort of god complex, like he’s the most important thing in the world. He gets needy, like in a desperate, I’d-hook-up-with-you-in-the-bathroom kind of way, and his mood swings are entirely unpredictable. Which is, to say, the exact opposite of what he’s like when he’s sober.

Chanyeol lightly pushes Baekhyun away from him, trying not to damage his ego too much. “I think we should head home before you get alcohol poisoning.”

Baekhyun rolls his head in a tired circle, which Chanyeol takes as a form of agreement.

“Stay right here,” he says, pushing Baekhyun down onto a stool. He walks away, toward the bartender, to pay for the countless drinks that Baekhyun downed.

The bartender explains, with more detail and backstory than is required to get the point across, that he owes Baekhyun, anyways, so the drinks are on the house.

When Chanyeol goes back to grab Baekhyun, he’s not there.

He searches the whole bar, every stall in the bathroom, in each corner, even under the tables, but he’s really not there, which is really not good.

When he reaches into his pocket, he finds that the car keys aren’t there.

Sure enough, when Chanyeol jogs out into the cool night, the car is no longer parked on the curb, and holy shit, there’s really no way that this can end well, because Baekhyun was on the verge of passing out, probably ready to vomit up all the contents of his stomach, and now he’s  _ driving _ .

He jogs the few blocks back to their apartment, the whole while wondering why they didn’t just take a cab because it would have been so much more simple and would have presented much less of a risk. 

The car’s not at the apartment.

He’s on the verge of pulling his hair out when he sees a cop parked outside of his apartment complex. Chanyeol approaches him and taps on the window of the car lightly.

The cop looks up at him surprisedly, but rolls down his window. “Is there something I can help you with, kid?” He doesn’t sound annoyed, or even bothered at all.

“Uh, yeah,” he scratches the back of his neck, searching for the right way to explain his situation. “My friend and I, we were at this bar,  _ Iwasn’tdrinkingofcourse _ , but he left and-”

The officer’s radio interrupts him.

“Officer, we’ve got an eleven-seventy-nine. I repeat, we have an eleven-seventy-nine, at Navy Pier, East Grand Avenue. Black BMW drove into the water. Emergency services are on their way. Car is almost completely submerged. There’s only one passenger.”

Chanyeol thinks that he has had to have heard wrong, because what sort of mad coincidence would it be, that the lady on the radio could be talking about his friend? But no, she definitely said a black BMW, and his blood runs cold at the thought of it. He thinks he might throw up or pass out or both.

The officer looks at Chanyeol, brows furrowed. “I gotta get on this one, kid.”

“That’s my friend, in the car,” he chokes out. “The black BMW.”

“What?”

“He left the bar and took the keys with him.” He turns away from the officer’s vehicle and empties his stomach onto the concrete.

“Get in the back, kid,” the officer sounds reluctant when he says it, but lets Chanyeol in, nonetheless.

In the few minutes it takes them to arrive at the scene, Chanyeol tries convincing himself that it’s not Baekhyun, that it can’t be Baekhyun, there are tons of black BMWs, and what are the chances it can really be him?

But Baekhyun was completely smashed, and he doesn’t know where else he could be, and  _ of fucking course it would be his luck to drive into the fucking water. _

They get to Navy Pier in less than three minutes, the policeman’s sirens blaring the whole way. Chanyeol sits in the backseat, trying not to get sick on the leather interior.

When they arrive to the scene, Chanyeol flings the door open, practically falls out of the car with how anxious he is to make sure that Baekhyun is alright.

The car is being hauled out of the water by some type of cranes; the ambulance arrives as they set the car on the ground. 

Two EMT’s race up to the car. One opens the door, the other pulls the driver out of the vehicle as water pours out, and the both of them are working to get the details on the situation. One of them puts two fingers to the boy’s wrist and his ear to his mouth, and shouts, “We don’t have a pulse!” They try chest compressions and shoving breaths down his throat, but it doesn’t appear to be working.

Chanyeol can’t stop himself from getting closer, and no one is focused on him which means that no one is focused on trying to stop him. When he’s just a few feet away from the boy and the two paramedics, it fully hits him that it is definitely Baekhyun lying on the ground, not breathing, and he has to turn away to dry heave for a few seconds.

A third paramedic rolls a gourney towards them, and the two already on the scene lift Baekhyun’s lifeless body onto it, and they get it back onto the ambulance in record time.

The cop that drove Chanyeol there says that he can ride in the ambulance, but he asks if the cop can just drive him to the hospital himself.

He nods, solemnly, and they both get back into the car. Neither of them says anything until they get there.

As Chanyeol removes himself from the cop car, the officer looks at him and says, “I’ll pray for your friend in there. He’s going to need it.”

Chanyeol just nods a thanks, although he’s not thankful for the comment at all; in fact, it only makes him feel worse.

He’s crying as he walks into the hospital, but he pretends he isn’t, and sits down in a hospital chair.

Every once in awhile, he asks reception if there are any updates on his friend, but no one seems to be keeping up with the situation, and he ends up falling asleep in one of the waiting-room chairs.


	2. The Days Immediately Following the Accident

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something strikes Chanyeol in the heart at that moment, and looking Baekhyun in the eye sends a chill down his spine. He has to look away.

The day after the accident, Chanyeol wakes up to a woman with thick-rimmed glasses and a long white coat shaking his shoulder.

“Hi, are you here for Baekhyun?”

He nods tiredly, and listens as the doctor - Dr. Andrysiak - explains what has happened since Baekhyun was loaded into the ambulance until now.

He was in cardiac arrest for twenty minutes, they approximate. It took four electric shocks from a defibrillator to get his heart going again, but he’s still unconscious. His coma isn’t medically induced so he could, technically, wake at any moment. He’s able to breathe on his own and he still has brain activity, which is a really good sign. She says that they’re taking him in in about an hour to have an MRI, and then, once they get the results back from the scan, it will be easier for them to tell the outcome of the situation.

“All brain injuries are different,” she explains. “There will never be one exactly like another. Everyone is different. Usually when someone is gone as long as he was, it’s hard to even get their heart beating again. But for him to have brain activity and to breathe on his own, is really amazing. He’s very strong.”

“Yeah, I know.”

The doctor pats him on the shoulder, gives him a soft smile, and says she’ll get back to him when there’s any more to tell him.

The next day, Andrysiak finds Chanyeol sitting on the waiting room sofa, watching the weather channel, but it doesn’t seem like he’s really paying attention.

“I’ve got some things in pertinence to the MRI results to talk to you about,” she says as she sits next to him on the couch. He doesn’t say anything, just looks at her expectantly, so she continues. “Brain activity is normal in more than seventy-five percent of the brain, which is really amazing, considering the trauma he went through.”

Chanyeol nods slowly, waiting for the  _ but _ .

“ _ But _ ,” she says, “there is some irregular activity happening in the part of his brain that deals with visual processing. This could mean many things. Although we can’t say anything for sure, it could mean that, when he wakes up, he will be partially blind, or totally blind. Maybe just color blind. It could wear off in time, but there’s no way for us to tell until he actually wakes up.”

Chanyeol nods, not really sure that he understands completely.

“Do you want to see him?”

He basically jumps out of his seat, and Dr. Andrysiak leads him to a room at the far end of the ICU.

“I’ll give you a few minutes.”

He nods vigorously in thanks and lets her shut the door behind her as she leaves, leaving Chanyeol alone in the room with a comatose Baekhyun.

He pulls a chair up beside the hospital bed, and takes one of Baekhyun’s cold hands between both of his. He rubs his thumb along the smooth skin of the back of Baekhyun’s hand and tries to think of the words the would be appropriate to fill up the silence.

“God, you’re such an idiot.” He laughs emotionlessly as his eyes begin to water. He wipes a stray tear away angrily and brings Baekhyun’s hand to his lips to place a gentle kiss on the back of it. “Please come back to me, Baek.”

He almost swears he feels Baekhyun squeeze his hand, but thinks better of it, that maybe it was only his imagination.

Chanyeol sits with him for a few minutes and then gets up slowly to leave. As he walks back to the waiting room, he tries to pretend that Baekhyun’s face hadn’t been pale and swollen, that there weren’t dried tear-tracks on both sides of his face, and that his heartbeat hadn’t picked up speed when Chanyeol had grabbed his hand.

*

After spending another day in the hospital, Chanyeol decides that he’s going to start developing spinal issues if he doesn’t stop sleeping in the stupid, uncomfortable hospital chairs. He also thinks he’s going to get sick from the smell, or maybe from the mushy food that they serve in the cafeteria.

So he leaves his number with Dr. Andrysiak, says to call him if anything happens, and heads back to the apartment in his rental car.

Chanyeol knows that he needs to take care of himself, for Baekhyun’s sake. So he showers, cooks himself a meal, and passes out for sixteen hours (because the chairs at the hospital are  _ really _ uncomfortable).

When he wakes up, he cleans up his dishes from the previous night, neatens up the apartment a little, feeds the goldfish. Vacuums. Organises Baekhyun’s art supplies. Anything to keep him busy until the hospital calls.

He organises all of Baek’s books in alphabetical order. He waters all the plants, twice. He starts creating a track for a new song. Gets frustrated and almost throws his laptop at the wall. Rearranges all the clothes in his closet so that they’re in rainbow-order.

And then he gets a call from Dr. Andrysiak that Baekhyun has started to wake up and that Chanyeol should get to the hospital as quickly as he can if he wants to be there for it.

He hangs up without saying anything, grabs his keys off the counter in the kitchen, and runs out of the apartment like his life depends on it.

When he gets to the hospital, he goes straight to the ICU, in the back where he’d gone the day before to visit Baekhyun.

Andrysiak isn’t the only one in the room. There’s a nurse checking Baekhyun’s vitals, and someone else standing to the side, writing stuff down on a clipboard.

And Baekhyun is awake.

They’ve elevated his bed so that he’s in a sitting position. His blanket is up to his chest, tucked under his arms, and his hands are clasped in his lap, twirling one thumb nervously around the other. He’s staring directly at Chanyeol, but it looks like he’s looking past him, through him, like Chanyeol isn’t even there. He’s sucking on his bottom lip like he does when he’s upset, and his eyebrows are scrunched together, like he’s trying really hard to think of something.

Andrysiak notices Chanyeol standing in the doorway and nods as if giving him permission to come in.

Chanyeol takes a few steps closer, waiting for Baekhyun to realise that he’s there, but he doesn’t. That’s when he notices that Baekhyun’s eyes are foggy, clouded over.

_ Although we can’t say anything for sure, it could mean that, when he wakes up, he will be partially blind, or totally blind. _

Dr. Andrysiak’s words ring through his head on repeat at one-hundred miles-per-hour.

Chanyeol walks right up to the hospital bed.

“Baekhyun?” He whispers, wondering if maybe he’s just not awake enough to react to anything yet.

But one of Baekhyun’s arms shoots out toward Chanyeol and grabs a hold of his shirt, tightly, and pulls him toward him.

Baekhyun still stares straight ahead, at the empty doorway, but he slowly turns his head to look at Chanyeol. “I,” Baekhyun starts, licks his chapped lips, continues, “Are they… are my eyes opened right now?”

Something strikes Chanyeol in the heart at that moment, and looking Baekhyun in the eye sends a chill down his spine. He has to look away.

Baekhyun swings his other arms around to punch Chanyeol in the shoulder, and he shouldn’t be this strong after he’s been in a coma for four days, but it hurts, in more than one way.

“Baek…”

“Don’t say my name.” He pushes Chanyeol away from him and lets go of his shirt.

“Baekhyun, please, don’t-”

One second, Baekhyun’s calm, barely moving, and then the next, he’s screaming at the top of his lungs for Chanyeol to get out, thrashing in his bed, but then the screaming stops, and his body is left shuddering violently, out of his control. His eyes roll back into his head as the doctor holding the clipboard yells, “He’s having a seizure!” Andrysiak and the nurse are trying to hold down his wrists, and clipboard-guy drops his clipboard so that he can hold Baekhyun’s mouth open. A couple other doctors flood into the room, try to stabilise him, and Chanyeol is pushed out of the room before Baekhyun calms down.

Chanyeol sits in the waiting room for a while, trying his hardest not to dissolve into a nervous wreck, and about an hour after Baekhyun’s episode, Andrysiak comes out to talk to him.

“It’s normal for something like that to happen. He’s in shock. He’s traumatised. He still needs time to adjust, obviously. I wouldn’t take it personally. Especially considering that he’s been begging everyone to bring you back.”

Chanyeol’s head snaps up to look at the doctor. “So now he wants to see- he wants me there?”

She nods. “Feel free to go back if you want.” And then she gets up and goes.

Chanyeol argues with himself for a while, trying to decide whether or not it’s a good idea for him to go back so soon. He’s mostly afraid that he’ll induce another episode, but eventually, because he needs to make sure that Baekhyun really is okay, he sighs, stands, and makes his way back to the ICU. The lady at the front desk doesn’t question him, just smiles and waves, and he returns the gesture. Once he reaches Baekhyun’s room, he knocks on the door before opening it and finds that Baekhyun is by himself.

“It’s Chanyeol.”

Baekhyun’s head is hanging, and his hands are folded in his lap. “Hi.” Chanyeol can hear the shame in his voice when he says it. But he scoots over nonetheless to allow room for Chanyeol to sit on the bed with him.

Chanyeol accepts his invitation and sits down.

Baekhyun is the first one to talk.

“So I guess I’m a blind epileptic now. What’s new with you?” He’s talking quieter than he usually does, and his voice is strained, which is understandable.

“Oh, you know, I’m pretty sure my spinal cord is permanently fucked from sleeping in a hospital chair for three days. And I’m also pretty sure that I’ve worn all my nerves down, so basically, nothing affects me anymore.”

Baekhyun lifts his head to stare unseeing at the ceiling, pondering.

“So, I think I’m going to quit smoking now. Not like I could find the cigarettes, anyways.”   
  


Chanyeol stares at the smaller boy, wondering how exactly he’s supposed to react to his sadistic jokes. “I’ve been trying to get you to quit for three years.”

“I only started because I knew you’d get pissed. It got a little out of hand.”

“I would call a pack a day a little more than just a little out of hand.”

Neither of them says anything for a few moments.

“They say that I’m in unbelievably good shape for someone who suffered what I did. I should be dead. Or not able to talk. Or move. They say the seizure was caused by overactive brain signals or some shit, and it probably won’t happen again, unless I get upset like I did.”

Chanyeol nods. “Andrysiak kept telling me how good you were doing. You were always tough.”

“I’m afraid of forgetting what you look like,” Baekhyun blurts out. “Or what anything looks like. And please don’t tell me that I might get my sight back. The chances aren’t high.”

Chanyeol pulls his legs up onto the small bed and turns his body to face Baekhyun. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Tell me that you’re the most beautiful person that I’ve ever met and there’s no way in hell I could ever forget what you look like.”

Chanyeol has learned, in his four years of friendship with Baekhyun, to not ask, just do. “Okay. I’m the most beautiful person that you’ve ever met and there’s no way in hell you could ever forget what I look like.”

“Good.”

Chanyeol wraps his arms around Baekhyun, rests his head on his shoulder, and closes his eyes. “It’ll be okay. We’re in this together, alright?”

A few minutes later, Chanyeol is snoring.

*

Baekhyun isn’t really sure how he’s going to adjust.

Everything is black. Occasionally, there’s a flash of bright light, but other than that, it’s like a thick lense has been placed over his eyes, a veil that’s barely there. He sighs frustratedly.

Instead of focusing on what he can’t see, he tries focusing on the accident. Trying to remember what happened.

He can remember trying to paint, and it just looked like a blob of color, and he was pissed.

He remembers dragging Chanyeol to the bar and downing drink after drink relentlessly.

He thinks he remembers maybe kissing Chanyeol at some point during the night, and just the thought of it causes a blush to rise up his neck.

_ That’s embarrassing. Our first kiss, and I was blackout drunk. _

He shakes the thought away.

He remembers thinking that it’d be funny if Chanyeol had to walk home alone.

He can’t remember how he ended up at the Pier, because it’s not even close to their apartment complex, and he can’t remember driving into the water.

Baekhyun sighs and rests his head on top of Chanyeol’s, and allows himself to drift off to sleep.


	3. Discharge Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There are ways for you to be able to relearn to cook and paint. The peeing-while-standing-up thing might be hopeless. I wouldn't sweat it, though."

After a week of being observed very carefully by a variety of different doctors, Andrysiak gives Baekhyun the okay to go home.

He still has to meet with her once a week, and he’s to stay with Chanyeol at all times.

Before they leave, Andrysiak pulls Chanyeol to the side.

“If he has another seizure, the best thing to do would be to find a way to somehow keep his body in place, and make sure you keep his mouth open. Call an ambulance, but only once you have him stabilised, okay?”

Chanyeol nods, and pretends that this advice doesn’t leave him a little bit on edge.

The hospital gives them a wheelchair to take with them, so after Chanyeol signs Baekhyun out, he wheels him out of the hospital and to his rental car.

Baekhyun doesn’t say anything, but doesn’t complain when Chanyeol helps him into the car and buckles his seatbelt for him.

He doesn’t say anything during the five minute ride. When they get to apartment complex, he tells Chanyeol that he doesn’t want to use the wheelchair; his legs still work, even if his eyes don’t.

Chanyeol nods, then voices his agreement when he realises that Baekhyun can’t see him nod.  He hooks his arm around the smaller boy’s and leads him into the building. In the elevator, Baekhyun gently lies a hand against the buttons, drags his hand across them until he gets all the way to the top, and pushes the top right button.

“Hey, look at me, I’m not completely useless,” he deadpans.

When they get back to the apartment, Chanyeol unlocks the door and opens it, stepping aside to let Baekhyun in first.

Once inside, Baekhyun stops, stands in one place, and looks around. He points straight ahead. “The couch is there.”

Chanyeol closes the door behind him and steps up next to Baekhyun. “Yeah.”

“This is going to be hard.”

“Yeah.”

“I think I want to take a nap.”

Chanyeol purses his lips. “I think that should be alright.”

Baekhyun reaches over and takes Chanyeol’s hand in his, barely, like a ghost. 

“Come with me.”

Chanyeol gently squeezes Baekhyun’s hand. “If you really want me to.”

“I do.”

Chanyeol sighs heavily and gently pulls Baekhyun towards his room. He leaves the door open, and Baekhyun lets go of his hand, walks over to the bed on his own, and collapses onto it.

He rolls over after a few minutes to stare blankly at the ceiling. Pulls himself fully onto the bed. Motions for Chanyeol to join him.

He feels the mattress go down when Chanyeol sits, and he turns his body to face him. “I’m not going to be able to paint anymore. Or cook. Or pee without missing the toilet, probably.”

“There are ways for you to be able to relearn to cook and paint. The peeing-while-standing-up thing might be hopeless. I wouldn’t sweat it, though.”

Baekhyun nods and closes his eyes. Chanyeol lies down next to him, pulls the blanket over the both of them, and they fall asleep together without another word.

*

Chanyeol wakes up an hour later to a crashing in the living room, and an empty bed.

He throws off the covers and runs out of the room. The living room is completely trashed.

The canvas that Baekhyun had been working on has been thrown onto the floor, and is splattered with clashing colors, with a hole that appears to have been punched through it. Paints canisters are opened and pouring out onto the hardwood floor, and there’s some shattered glass spread around. Paintbrushes and pencils and basically all of Baekhyun’s art supplies is tossed about.

_ I just organised that,  _ is Chanyeol’s first thought.

His second thought it that, he’d been warned that if, for some reason Baekhyun gets very upset, it heightens his chance of having another epileptic episode, so his heartbeat quickens when he takes in the mess.

Baekhyun is sitting on the couch, staring straight ahead, tears streaming down his face, clearly not having a seizure (to Chanyeol’s brief relief). As Chanyeol approaches him, he notices a streak of blood on the floor.

“Baek…”

When he’s almost directly in front of him, Chanyeol notices that Baekhyun’s lip is trembling, like he’s on the verge of sobbing.

He leans down in front of him.

“What are you doing out here?”

“Painting.” At that moment, he falls from the couch onto his knees on the floor in front of Chanyeol. He wraps his arms around his taller friend and pulls him close. Chanyeol can feel Baekhyun’s body shaking with every sob, and each uneven breath that he takes in.

Chanyeol rubs his back with one hand, and holds Baekhyun’s head to his chest with the other.

Angrily, between sobs, he says, “Art is the only thing I’m good at.” It takes him a lot longer to say it than it should have, because every time he tries saying just one word, he starts crying harder. “How am I going to do anything now?”

Chanyeol sighs. “It’s not going to be easy, Baek. It’s going to be the hardest fucking thing in the world. But I believe in you. And I’m going to be next to you the whole way.”

Neither of them say anything for a bit, just sit there holding each other, until Baekhyun is all cried out.

“I love you, Chanyeol.”

Chanyeol laughs. “Alright, Baek.” He tries to ignore Baekhyun’s comment to the best of his ability, so he thinks back to the blood he’d seen on the floor. “Where are you hurt?”

Baekhyun pulls back, sits on his calves. “My foot. I stepped on a shard of glass. I don’t think it’s that bad but then again I can’t really see how deep it is.”

“Stay right here. Don’t move.” Chanyeol runs to the bathroom, wets a washcloth, and grabs some gauze and neosporin. When he goes back to the living room, he maneuvers Baekhyun so that his foot is on Chanyeol’s thigh. Ignoring Baekhyun’s, “What’s the damage, doc?” comment, he cleans up the blood with the washcloth, spreads some neosporin on the (minor, as Baekhyun had suspected) wound, and wraps it with gauze.

As Chanyeol cleans up the glass and the rest of the mess, Baekhyun says, “What would I do without you?”

“I don’t know. Probably run into a lot of things.”

“Hey! I only ran into one wall getting from the bedroom into here.”

Chanyeol claps ironically. “Congratulations. You could have done worse.”

Later, when the only pieces of evidence of Baekhyun’s breakdown that are left are his ruined canvas and a bit of dried paint on the floor, they sit on the couch facing each other, eating the take-out Chinese food that Baekhyun had ordered (Chanyeol  _ was _ going to order it, but Baekhyun insisted that it was one of the few things that he  _ could _ probably do).

“I think,” Baekhyun says as he stabs a piece of orange chicken with a chopstick, “that this isn’t too bad.” He shoves the piece of chicken in his mouth.

“The chicken or the being unable to see?” Chanyeol picks at his white rice.

“The latter. I mean, it’s not like we have money problems, so I don’t have to worry about getting back to making money right away. I have time to adjust.”

Chanyeol shrugs. Makes a noise of discontent in the back of his throat. “I’ll have to take time off of work, unless you wanna come sit in the bookstore with me all day. But you wouldn’t have anything to do.”

“I have so much money that you probably wouldn’t have to work for the next fifteen years.”

“You’re not my sugar daddy,” Chanyeol says it as a joke but Baekhyun just shrugs.

“Anyway,” Baekhyun says, changing the subject, “I think it’d be best if you actually officially moved in, instead of just staying here all the time and paying rent at your small, insufficient apartment.”

It’s not a bad idea. Chanyeol has been paying rent at an apartment that he’s never at for nearly a year, and he’s making barely above minimum wage at an old book store. And the apartment’s on the opposite side of town; the whole situation is inconvenient.

“Alright.”

Baekhyun quirks an eyebrow at his friend. “Really? You’ll move in?”

“What?” Chanyeol’s confused as to why Baekhyun seems so surprised. “It’s not like we’re getting married.”

Baekhyun shrugs.


	4. The Few Weeks Following Baekhyun's Return Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chanyeol closes the bathroom door behind him and goes to the kitchen to start preparing dinner. He pretends not to hear the moans coming from the bathroom.

The first week is the hardest, because Baekhyun has a hard time doing certain things on his own, and it seems like these things will be a permanent challenge.

Showering is the most awkward problem that arises. At first Baekhyun thinks that he’s purposely struggling in the shower so that Chanyeol will come help him, but after a while, he realises that he really is having a hard time managing it.

The first time Baekhyun asks for help in the shower, Chanyeol doesn’t think twice until he actually sees his friend naked with hot water running down his body.

He quickly looks away, then realises that Baekhyun can’t really know that he’s staring, so he slowly allows himself to turn back towards his friend.

Chanyeol tries to help him from outside the shower, but it’s mostly ineffective because he gets water everywhere whenever he pulls the curtain back to help him with something, so eventually, he strips down and just gets in the shower with him. He doesn’t allow himself to feel self-conscious because Baekhyun can’t really criticise him.

“We’re showering together,” Baekhyun states, and he can’t stop laughing. Him and Chanyeol are facing each other, and Chanyeol is trying to shampoo his hair.

“God, shut up.”

“If I knew all I had to do to get you to shower with me was go blind, I would have gotten in that accident four years ago.”

Chanyeol takes a deep breath in. “Now is a bad time to be hitting on me.”

“Why? We’re both naked. In the shower. Together. Is there really a better time?”

“Literally any other time would be a better time.”

“Duly noted.”

Chanyeol rolls his eyes and rinses out Baekhyun’s hair. Conditions. Rinses.

“I can do the rest if you hand me the body wash.”

Chanyeol sighs, relieved, because the thoughts of having his hands all over Baekhyun’s body is almost too much. He hands his friend the body wash.

“I’m getting out now. There’s a clean towel for you on the towel rack.”

Chanyeol closes the bathroom door behind him and goes to the kitchen to start preparing dinner. He pretends not to hear the moans coming from the bathroom.

Baekhyun continues to ask for Chanyeol’s help in the shower, and Chanyeol unthinkingly provides it.

Chanyeol matches Baekhyun’s outfits for him, and does his hair and makeup when he asks, although he’s yet to leave the apartment.

Baekhyun insists that Chanyeol sleep in his room with him, even though Chanyeol has his own room and Baekhyun doesn’t really tend to need his help with anything during the nights.

Two weeks after the accident takes place, Chanyeol officially moves in with Baekhyun.

He also makes an arrangement with the bookstore so that he only has to work on the weekends, and Baekhyun is bothered by staying at the apartment alone so he goes and loiters around the old store when he has to.

He sits cross-leggedly behind the checkout counter with Chanyeol, flipping through books. Every once in awhile, he gasps and lets out an exclamation of, “I can’t believe that happened,” or maybe, “how could he live with himself after that?” like he’s actually reading the book.

When Chanyeol gets off, they make stops at the stores that Chanyeol avoids going to during the week so that he doesn’t have to leave Baekhyun by himself. Sometimes they go out to eat, and Baekhyun lets Chanyeol order for him because he knows what he likes. Sometimes they stroll around the city aimlessly until Baekhyun gets tired of not being able to see what’s around him, which doesn’t really take long.

A few days after Chanyeol moves in, he wakes up to find that Baekhyun isn’t in the bed next to him. He tiredly removes himself from the bed, and makes his way around the apartment.

The door to the balcony is open, so Chanyeol goes there.

He finds Baekhyun leaning forward, elbows on the railing, staring into the night sky. Chanyeol walks out soundlessly and stands next to his smaller friend.

“I wish I could see the stars,” Baekhyun says it, and his voice sounds far away. “A lot of things I can deal without seeing. But I just wish I could see the stars.”

Chanyeol sidesteps, so that their shoulders are rubbing against each other. “I’m sorry.”

Baekhyun reaches down and takes Chanyeol’s hand in his. “I know you are.”

“Lets go back inside.”

Baekhyun lets Chanyeol lead him back to the bedroom. He stops in the doorway. “I don’t want to go back to sleep.”

“What  _ do _ you want?”

Baekhyun looks down at his feet. Mumbles, “Could you, maybe, read to me?”

Chanyeol agrees, and searches the room for something to read as Baekhyun situates himself on the bed. After a few minutes, he finds a book full of poetry.

Baekhyun finds Chanyeol’s voice so soothing that it doesn’t take him more than a few minutes to fall back asleep.

Chanyeol tries to treat Baekhyun well. He makes him meals every day, he lets Baekhyun cuddle with him and hold his hand (although, he thinks, it’s likely he’d let him do that despite the consequences), he reteaches him how to do certain things (at the end of week three, Baekhyun has successfully begun cooking again), and spends every waking moment with him. And even some unconscious moments.

Chanyeol starts having the same dream every night about two weeks after the accident.

It’s short, only lasts a moment.

Chanyeol is in the car with Baekhyun; Baekhyun driving, himself in the passenger seat. He’s driving with only one hand on the steering wheel. Then he turns to look at Chanyeol, puts his non-driving hand to Chanyeol’s cheek. “I feel so alive when I’m with you.” And he leans over the center console, to kiss Chanyeol, probably, but then the car is airborne, nose dives into the water, and Chanyeol wakes up.

It’s always just slightly after four in the morning when he awakes from the dream, and he always turns to Baekhyun to try and find comfort in how peaceful he looks when he’s asleep. It helps, more than he likes to admit.

One day, Baekhyun mentions that Chanyeol sounds slower, more tired, than usual, but Chanyeol just waves it off.

Most days, Baekhyun is compliant. He’s patient when Chanyeol is teaching him new things, and very enthusiastic. Always smiling like there’s not one thing in the world that could possibly bring him down. And his eyes, although cloudy and unseeing, still sparkle.

Other days, Baekhyun gets tired of trying. If something doesn’t go his way, he cries. Sometimes he screams. He’s very uptight and gets frustrated even when there isn’t much for him to be frustrated about.

On one of his off days, he hits Chanyeol. Chanyeol knows that Baekhyun had been aiming for the wall and not his cheek, but Baekhyun pulls his fist back, like he’d been burned, when he feels skin against his fist instead of the wall.

Chanyeol is left with an ugly bruise on his cheekbone, and Baekhyun with ugly bruises on his knuckles.

Baekhyun can’t seem to stop apologising. After three days, Chanyeol starts to think that he might never stop apologising, and he’s glad that Baekhyun can’t see the mark he left on Chanyeol’s face, because that would definitely have made it worse.

“Hey, I’m sorta glad you punched me instead of the wall, anyways. You probably would have broken your hand.”

“I’d rather hurt myself than hurt you.”

Neither of them talks for a while after that.


	5. A Month After the Accident

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chanyeol is suddenly reminded of how Baekhyun, drunk, had acted in the bar on the night of the accident, and sits up, too fast, too, because he ends up knocking his head against Baekhyun's.

Baekhyun has asked Chanyeol to sit across from him on the floor, and Chanyeol hesitantly adheres to his request.

“I have to see with my hands now, since I can’t see like normal people do.”

Chanyeol scrunches his eyebrows together in thought. “Okay? What exactly are you-”

But then one of Baekhyun’s fingers finds its way to Chanyeol’s lips, and it shuts him up really quick.

Chanyeol closes his eyes, keeps them closed the whole time that Baekhyun’s hands roam his face.

Baekhyun allows himself to crawl onto Chanyeol’s lap so that he doesn’t have to reach so far, and Chanyeol thinks this might be turning him on more than it should be.

Baekhyun swipes a thumb across each of Chanyeol’s eyelids, and then his cheekbones, and then his lips. His hands cup the sides of his face, and he brings them down, past Chanyeol’s neck, to rest on his shoulders. He does it slowly, carefully, like this means a lot to him and he’s trying to savor it.

Chanyeol doesn’t anticipate Baekhyun leaning forward to place a chaste kiss at the corner of his mouth, but once it happens, Chanyeol allows himself to think for a moment that everything really will be okay eventually.

“You are so beautiful, Chanyeol.” Baekhyun places another kiss on the other side of his mouth. “I can’t believe how beautiful you are, even when I can’t see you.”

Chanyeol is staring at Baekhyun, hard and thoughtlessly, words escaping from his mind completely. Because what, really, are you supposed to say when the most beautiful person on the planet is telling you how beautiful you are?

And then, before Chanyeol realises that he’s made a decision, he’s kissing Baekhyun, with everything he has left in him. He doesn’t linger, doesn’t let it last even long enough for Baekhyun to realise what’s happening. He lets himself digest how warm Baekhyun is, how astonishingly soft his lips are, before he forces himself to pull away. He thinks about maybe trying to escape because he really can’t believe he just did that, but Baekhyun is still on his lap so that’s not a viable option.

Baekhyun looks at him, lips parted, and cheeks flushed. He brings his hands down from Chanyeol’s shoulders to rest on the taller boy’s hips instead. Blinks a couple times.

“Do that again.”

Chanyeol is really out of his mind. “What?”

“I said,” Baekhyun says as he grinds his hips down on Chanyeol’s lap, “do that again.”

How the situation turned around so drastically, Chanyeol doesn’t really know. But what he  _ does _ know is that he might actually pass out because of how hot Baekhyun is.

He obliges nonetheless, leaning forward to kiss Baekhyun again. Baekhyun is quicker to respond this time, leaning into the kiss so forcefully that Chanyeol’s back is forced onto the floor. Baekhyun’s elbows are beside Chanyeol’s head, his hands in the younger boy’s hair, and Chanyeol’s pants are somehow even tighter than they were before.

Baekhyun smiles against his mouth. “Do I make you hot?” He whispers it, like a growl, between wet, breathy kisses.

Chanyeol responds by pressing his hips into the smaller boy’s.

Baekhyun responds by moaning into Chanyeol’s mouth.

Chanyeol is suddenly reminded of how Baekhyun, drunk, had acted in the bar on the night of the accident, and sits up, too fast, too, because he ends up knocking his head against Baekhyun’s. “I’m sorry, I can’t do this right now.”

Baekhyun rubs the spot on his forehead where their heads banged together. “It  _ feels _ like you want to do this right now.” To prove his point, he reaches a hand down between Chanyeol’s thighs and palms his crotch.

Chanyeol grabs Baekhyun’s wrist and pushes it away. “Not now.”

Baekhyun removes himself from Chanyeol’s lap, sulking and looking obviously disappointed.

Chanyeol takes a deep breath, stands, and goes to walk towards the kitchen, shaking his head as if it will rid his mind of the scene that just played out.

“Why do you keep rejecting me?” Baekhyun yells at him from his place on the floor, and Chanyeol can’t help but notice how dejected and small he looks.

“I didn’t reject you.” Chanyeol’s standing between the living room and kitchen, arms crossed over his chest.

“At the bar on the night of the accident, I kissed you and you pushed me away, saying that we needed to go home.”

“Hey, you were dr-”

“On the night where I trashed this room, I told you that I love you and you  _ laughed _ .”

Chanyeol hadn’t thought twice about it when it had happened. He stays quiet.

“And now this. But then other times I think…” He stops himself. “So what is it? Is it me?”

“You don’t want this, Baek.”

“I’ve always wanted this.”

Chanyeol shakes his head. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I am  _ not _ playing the victim here, Chanyeol.”

Chanyeol grits his teeth and turns away, walks toward his own room.

“I meant it when I said I love you,” Baekhyun practically screams it as Chanyeol slams his door shut.

Chanyeol doesn’t even bother to move the pile of clothes from his bed as he collapses onto it and falls into a fitful sleep.

*

Baekhyun doesn’t sleep that night.

He lies on his bed, staring blankly at his ceiling. He thinks of all the times Chanyeol held his hand, and slept with his body pressed tightly against Baekhyun’s back. He thinks of all the things that Chanyeol has done for him since the accident. Of all the things Chanyeol did for him before.

Ever since Baekhyun’s parents died in that car accident four years previous, Chanyeol has always provided the support that Baekhyun needed. He was always Baekhyun’s shoulder to cry on, his go-to when something went wrong. He helped him pick out his first car, his first apartment.

They applied to the same colleges, before either of them realised that that wasn’t what they really wanted.

Maybe Baekhyun was being selfish. Maybe he had been too focused on Chanyeol being there for him, that he hadn’t done the same in return.

He stares at the ceiling until the sun rises.

When he figures that enough time has passed that Chanyeol will probably be awake soon, Baekhyun makes his way out to the kitchen. He pours himself a glass of water, without dropping anything or hurting himself, and leans against the counter, waiting.

Chanyeol comes out after maybe fifteen minutes, only because he’d heard Baekhyun fumbling around in the kitchen and gotten curious.

Neither of them say anything at first, just stand there silently in each other’s presence. Baekhyun walks over to the fridge so that he can refill his glass of water, but Chanyeol slams the door shut just after the smaller boy opens it.

“What.” Baekhyun’s shoulders are hunched forward, and he sounds entirely uninterested.

“I’m sorry.”

“Okay.” He opens the fridge, takes out the pitcher of water, one thumb in the cup as he fills it so he can detect how high he fills it, and puts the pitcher back. Takes a sip.

Chanyeol is staring at him the whole while.

“Don’t you have something better you could be doing, you know, rather than just standing there and staring at me?”

Chanyeol opens his mouth to say something, but Baekhyun is already pushing past him to go into the living room. Chanyeol follows helplessly. “I’m trying to apologise; why are you acting like this?”

Baekhyun turns on his heel to glare at his taller friend. “I’m just tired.”

Chanyeol sighs, unconvinced. “I’m going to head out to the store. Do you wanna come?”

Baekhyun purses his lips, taps a finger against his chin as if in deep thought. “I suppose.”

*

On the ride there, some song that Chanyeol has never heard comes on the radio, but somehow Baekhyun knows all the words to it.

All of Chanyeol’s stress is stripped away from him the moment he hears Baekhyun’s melodic voice drifting through the car, and he rubs his neck, as if that will help push away the blush that he feels creeping up.

At the store, Baekhyun walks so close to Chanyeol that their shoulders bump together. Chanyeol grabs his smaller friend’s hand and squeezes, but he holds on to it for the rest of the trip. He pretends not to see Baekhyun blushing out of the corner of his eye.

As they leave the store, Baekhyun mentions that he’s thirsty, so Chanyeol stops at a local place called Kung Fu Tea to get some bubble tea. Baekhyun takes it and quietly thanks Chanyeol.

When they get back to their apartment complex, Chanyeol carries all the grocery bags (although there aren’t really that many of them), and holds every door open for Baekhyun. Back at the apartment, Chanyeol puts all the groceries away.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m putting the groceries away,” Chanyeol says as he gathers the empty plastic bags that had held their groceries.

“No, I mean what are you doing.”

“I’m…” Chanyeol bites his lip. “I’m just trying to say sorry.”

“Well, stop. It’s weird.”

“Me being nice is weird?”

Baekhyun licks his lips. “No, that’s not what I meant. You have nothing to apologise for.”

“What about last night?”

“It’s in the past.”

“I don’t want last night to just be forgotten.”

“Why not?”

“Because… it was going really well before I ruined it.” Chanyeol is really glad that Baekhyun can’t see him in this moment, because his hands are sort of shaking and his face is heating up.

“So why did you ruin it?”

“You were just… I was just thrown off by how different you acted.”

“Used to being the dominant one, huh?”

Chanyeol chokes on the air in his windpipe.

Baekhyun is smirking, still leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. “No, it’s okay. I’ve just been too busy pining for you for the last four years that I haven’t had any free time on the side to get myself laid.”

“You have  _ not _ -”

“Oh, I definitely have.”

Chanyeol goes to take a step towards Baekhyun but then thinks better of it. “That’s like the whole time that we’ve known each other.”

“Yeah.” He says it indifferently, like it’s old news.

“I thought you went out with that one guy? Uh, what was his name… Sehun, right? That’s right, right?”

Baekhyun cringes just thinking about it. “Yeah, we went out. Like, twice. After that, I tried to take him out for drinks, but then he told me he was underage and I decided that I’d rather not go down that road.”

“You haven’t been with anyone for four years?” Chanyeol sounds astonished, like he can’t believe it for one second.

“Yeah, I guess you could say I’m a little bit  _ dedicated _ .”

Chanyeol’s breath hitches in his throat, and he’s really not sure how to implore the topic at hand from this point forward.

He takes a cautious step forward. “I should kiss you now, right?”

“Well, I’m not sayin’ you  _ should _ , but I probably wouldn’t st-”

Chanyeol takes the one step it takes to close the gap between the two of them, wraps his arms around Baekhyun’s waist, and pulls him toward him, kissing him like he’s the most precious thing in the world (And he is, to Chanyeol, at least).

Baekhyun kisses back with equal magnitude, pushing himself up onto his tiptoes. His hands are in Chanyeol’s hair, tugging, and he’s been waiting for this for so long.

“I have something I need to show you,” Baekhyun mumbles against Chanyeol’s lips, between kisses and gasps of air.

Chanyeol moves to place a kiss at the corner of Baekhyun’s mouth, and then along his jawline, down his neck, onto his collarbone. “Hm?”

“ _ Fuck _ .” Baekhyun knows that he’s become increasingly needier since the accident, and that this small dose of what he’s been waiting four years for is much more satisfying than he thought it would be, and he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to stop himself, which scares him.

Chanyeol’s sucking on the tender skin at the nape of his neck, and god, would Baekhyun love to see the marks he leaves. Chanyeol’s hands ride up Baekhyun’s waist, lifting his shirt just the slightest.

Baekhyun is moaning, because he can’t stop thinking about how good Chanyeol’s hands feel on his skin, and he is hyper aware of Chanyeol’s knee easing between his legs, and he thinks,  _ This is it. This is the end of my godforsaken life. _

“I really,” Baekhyun tries, but then Chanyeol is fumbling with the smaller boy’s belt buckle, and Baekhyun’s been fantasizing about this for so long, he thinks he might never forgive himself if he stops it here. “God, I really fucking want you right now.”

For a moment, Chanyeol stops, lips on Baekhyun’s neck, hands between the two of them.

Baekhyun takes this opportunity to say what he needs to say.

“Listen, you know I really wanna do this, more than anything in the world, and I know you do, too, but I think there’s something you really need to see, like, right now.”

Chanyeol pulls back to look at him, and he can’t help but notice that Baekhyun looks really nervous, and, yeah, he hasn’t done this in four years. Chanyeol looks down at his feet. “I wasn’t trying to rush you, I…”

“No, that’s not it. You really don’t understand how long I’ve been waiting for this. But there’s something you really need to see.”

Before Chanyeol has the chance to reply, Baekhyun is grabbing his hand and pulling him towards his bedroom. When they get there, Baekhyun leaves Chanyeol in the doorway, and gets down onto the floor so that he can reach under his bed to grab something.

Chanyeol is, needless to say, very confused at the sudden change of situation.

When Baekhyun stands back up, he’s holding an old, leather-covered sketchbook in his hands, and he holds it out for Chanyeol to take, who quickly obliges. They both sit on the bed, and Baekhyun nods his head, urging Chanyeol to flip through the pages.

After flipping through the first few pages, Chanyeol notices a few things. First, each drawing is an elaborate pencil sketch of himself. Like, extremely elaborate. Baekhyun really got every single detail to a T. Second, the pages are smudged with lead and slightly bent, worn from wear. As he keeps flipping through the book, he realises that he can see him aging in the sketches, and searches the page for a date and sure enough, he finds one scribbled in the bottom corner. He quickly flips back to the first page, and the date reads September sixth, two-thousand-eleven. The day they met, he recalls.

Suddenly, he’s reliving that day like it was just yesterday. Baekhyun had been nineteen, and Chanyeol eighteen; they were both on the subway to the same place - an art exhibition. Except, it was Baekhyun’s art that was being shown, and the whole ride there, Chanyeol gushed about how powerful his paintings were and how they reminded him of all the things he’s never been able to say, and the whole time, Chanyeol didn’t really notice how wide Baekhyun was smiling, or the pure joy radiating from his being because Chanyeol himself was lost in how passionate he was about Baekhyun’s work. They walked together from the subway stop to the art show, and Chanyeol talked about how most modern artists can get away with about anything, but it’s taking the risk, the jump to a different level, that really makes someone an artist, and how Baekhyun does that so well. At the exhibit, Baekhyun waved goodbye to Chanyeol, still beaming, and said he’d meet him after the show. And then, when Baekhyun walked up to the microphone and introduced himself, Chanyeol pushing towards the front of the crowd of people gathered, he nearly passed out.  _ How embarrassing,  _ he’d thought,  _ talking about him like he was the love of my life, to his face, without even knowing it was him.  _ All the art displayed was magnificent, and Chanyeol gazed at it, absorbed it, because he never wanted to forget it. And, sure enough, once the exhibition ended, Baekhyun, sticking to his word, met Chanyeol outside in the cool late-summer air, and gave him his number.

Chanyeol shakes the memory away. Flips to the back of the book to find an unfinished sketch from the day of the accident. He takes a deep breath and turns to Baekhyun.

“Baek…”

“I meant it when I said that I love you.”

Chanyeol nods, chews on his lip. Trying to think of the right words to say. “I can’t believe myself. That day on the subway. When I talked about you with such deep admiration. Right to your face. I sounded like a lovesick fool, didn’t I?” Baekhyun laughs quietly and nods. “And I can’t believe  _ you _ . Not even telling me that it was you. God. That may hold the top spot for most embarrassing moment of my existence.”

“I was in a bad mood that day. I really needed the ego boost.”

Chanyeol shoves Baekhyun’s shoulder lightly, and laughter shakes his body. “You have a bigger ego than anyone I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.”

“Thank you.” His face is scrunched up, the way it does when he’s trying really hard not to laugh, Chanyeol’s come to learn.

“I love you, Baekhyun. Really.”

Baekhyun nods, scoots closer to Chanyeol, and puts his head on his shoulder. “Good.”

“Let's sleep.”

Baekhyun sighs tiredly, and takes Chanyeol’s suggestion.

After they’re both settled under the covers, Chanyeol allows himself to remember a brief interaction between the two of them, after Baekhyun had woken from his coma. Chanyeol had asked Baekhyun why he sleeps so much, and Baekhyun had replied,  _ The only time I can ever see anything anymore is when I dream. _

It’s the last thing Chanyeol things about before he falls asleep.


	6. Requited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It smells like the hospital, but it's worse, because here, he actually has to deal with people.

The next day is Baekhyun’s last meeting with Doctor Andrysiak.

After Baekhyun leaves these appointments, he usually refuses to talk about it, but today when he walks out of the hospital and meets Chanyeol outside, he looks the more excited than Chanyeol’s seen him in a while.

They hook arms and walk towards Chanyeol’s car together, and Baekhyun says, “Andrysiak says that she thinks the next step for me should be to get a seeing eye dog!”

Chanyeol wonders why he never thought about this before.

“That way, you wouldn’t have to monitor me all the time, and you can start working more if you’d like. She said I’m doing pretty well. Plus, having a service dog is the only way I could own a pet living in the apartment we live in now. What do you think?”

“I think it’s a magnificent plan.”

*

So, after Andrysiak mentions that someone she knows has a service dog that has just completed her training, Baekhyun calls and makes an appointment to meet them.

They’re on the outskirts of the city, in the more suburban area. It’s a mom, dad, and their thirteen-year-old daughter. And, of course, a gorgeous golden retriever who responds to the name Holly.

Holly takes to Baekhyun immediately. As soon as they’re let into the house, she’s all over him, giving him puppy kisses and trying to sit on his lap (although she’s much too big to be a lap dog).

Baekhyun pets her, but something in him must have snapped, because the smile on his face slowly fades, and he begins to act distant.

Chanyeol excuses the two of them and pulls Baekhyun to the side.

“Hey, what’s wrong? What happened?”

Baekhyun is staring blankly at his shoes. “This means I’m really not getting my sight back, right?” When Baekhyun looks up, there are tears pouring down his face.

Chanyeol pulls him into an embrace, trying to ignore the possibility of his heart having just broken. But it’s too much, because Baekhyun starts sobbing, and Chanyeol knows that the family in the other room must be getting curious as to what’s going on.

He pets Baekhyun’s hair as he holds him. “Hey, it’s okay,” he whispers into the smaller boy’s ear. But then, Chanyeol assumes, something else is wrong, because Baekhyun’s arms fall from around Chanyeol’s waist, twitching at his sides.

Chanyeol puts his hands on Baekhyun’s shoulders, pushes him back to look him in the eyes. His lips have run dry, and are forming quiet, incoherent words. But then his body starts convulsing, and his eyes roll back into his head, and Chanyeol can feel his heart in his throat.

Baekhyun crumples to his knees and falls back onto the floor. Chanyeol barely registers himself yelling, “Someone call nine-one-one!” He straddles Baekhyun’s waist, like he’d been informed to do, and holds his mouth open. Baekhyun’s arms are flailing, smacking against Chanyeol’s thighs, and hard, too, because he thinks he can feel the bruises already forming.

Chanyeol registers the mother of the family on the phone a few feet away, telling whoever’s on the other end of the call that there’s someone in her home having a seizure, and then she hangs up and tells Chanyeol that there’s an ambulance on the way.

Baekhyun’s body goes limp after a few minutes, before the ambulance arrives, and he stares unseeingly at Chanyeol, mouthing words, but incapable of making noises. When the ambulance does arrive, Chanyeol apologises to the family for the scene that has played out, gets in the ambulance with Baekhyun, and holds his hand the whole way to the hospital.

At the hospital, Chanyeol is forced to stay behind in the waiting room while they take Baekhyun away to have tests done. He sits in a chair, tugs on his hair.

He sees someone sit in the chair next to him in his peripheral vision. He knows it’s Andrysiak before he looks up.

“He was doing so well.”

Andrysiak nods. “This is a normal thing. He’s going to be okay.” She says it so confidently, Chanyeol almost believes her.

“I never wanted to come back here.” And then Chanyeol has to run to the bathroom, because all of a sudden, being in this place again, thinking back to the last time he was here, is too much, and he empties to contents of his stomach into a toilet. Once he’s cleaned himself up, he goes back to the waiting room, and finds that Andrysiak has left.

He ends up spending the night in the hospital, without hearing a single thing about Baekhyun’s condition, although he tries not to worry too much, keeping thoughts of how quickly Baekhyun recovered from his first seizure at the forefront of his mind. 

The next morning, a nurse wakes Chanyeol and says that Doctor Andrysiak would like to see him. He rises sleepily, and allows the nurse to show him to Andrysiak’s personal office.

He sits in one of the purple plush chairs, and allows himself to wish for a mere few seconds that these were the type of chairs they had in the waiting room.

Andrysiak doesn’t wait for Chanyeol to settle himself before she starts talking.

“Baekhyun is… not recovering as quickly as we had assumed he would. He’s rendered speechless at the moment. He can form the words with his lips, but not the sounds. He can’t sit still; his hands won’t stop twitching. He didn’t sleep last night; every nurse that took turns watching him during the night said that he barely ever blinked, let alone closed his eyes for a drawn out period of time. We took another MRI, and the levels of cortisol in his brain have spiked so high that we think it best to keep him in a stabilised environment for some time. Cortisol is a hormone known to be associated with severe depression, depending on the levels.”

Chanyeol stares at the doctor for a moment, looks up at the ceiling, and takes a deep breath. “So what you’re telling me is…”

“I think we should have him put in a mental rehabilitation center. Not for a long time. Maybe even for just a week or so. But I think it would benefit him.”

“Will he consent to this?”

“He can’t consent to this, in his current state. And because both of his parents are deceased, and you live with him, I would like to know how you would feel about having him rehabilitated.”

Chanyeol pinches his bottom lip between his thumb and pointer finger, shakes his head. “You really think that it will help him?”

Andrysiak nods. “I don’t know what else we could do for him.”

Chanyeol clenches his jaw. “Will I be able to visit him?”

“Once a week. Every Friday.”

He closes his eyes, sinks down into his seat. “Alright. You have my permission.”

*

A week later, he visits Baekhyun for the first time. They’re put in a room together, completely empty save the metal table and cushioned chairs in the center.

When Chanyeol walks into the room, Baekhyun is sitting at the table, fumbling with his hands. Twirling his thumbs around one another.

Chanyeol sits across from Baekhyun.

“Hey, Baek,” he says it softly, not sure of what state he’s in.

He glances up through his eyelashes, eyes still cloudy. He purses his lips, struggling to form the words. “M-missed,” he takes a deep breath, “y-y-you.” His voice is quiet, strained, and it sounds like it hurts him to speak.

Chanyeol grimaces. “I missed you too.”

“D-don’t… hate me?” The  _ m _ in ‘me’ is drawn out for a few seconds. It’s a question, not a plead.

The taller boy takes a shaky breath. “No, no, of course I don’t.” He looks around the room for a few seconds. “It’s weird not having you home with me.”

“They s-s-say that… g-go home… two weeks.”

“Yeah, they told me, too. They say you’re behaving perfectly. Eating all your meals, taking your meds without protesting, trying to participate in group therapy as much as possible.”

Baekhyun nods. “J-just want to l-leave, hon-n-nestly.” And he lets out a bark of laughter.

“Maybe if you keep going the way you’re going now, they’ll let you leave next week when I come to visit.”

“I’ll try.”

A security guard comes in to tell Chanyeol that his time’s almost up.

He makes his way around the table to Baekhyun, leans next to him, and puts his hand on top of the smaller boy’s. “I love you, don’t forget that, okay?” Baekhyun nods, and Chanyeol leans up to press a chaste kiss to his lips, and then his forehead.

And then he gets up to leave, and fights with everything in him not to turn back.

*

Next week when he visits, they don’t let Baekhyun leave. Or the week after that, or the week after that.

Chanyeol doesn’t ask why they’re keeping him longer than he’d initially promised, and he’s afraid to ask. On his fourth visit, Chanyeol mentions it to Baekhyun, who isn’t stuttering anymore.

“This girl… bit me.”

Chanyeol cocks an eyebrow. “She bit you?”

“Yeah, so I kicked her in the shin and called her a pussy. They said a minimum of three weeks for that.”

_ Sounds more like a prison than rehab,  _ Chanyeol thinks. “You’re ridiculous.”

Baekhyun nods in agreement. “They say when I leave I’ll still have to take all this medication. Five pills, when I wake up in the morning and before I go to sleep. My hands won’t stop shaking.”

That was the first thing Chanyeol had noticed when he walked into the room.

“I’ll make sure you take your medication every day, okay? Just don’t kick anyone else before next Friday.”

“Alright, I promise I won’t.”

*

Baekhyun hates the rehabilitation center. It smells like the hospital, but it’s worse, because here, he actually has to deal with people.

His stutter went away after the first week, but he pretended he still had it for two more weeks after that just so that he wouldn’t have to participate hugely in the group therapy sessions.

The only time where he doesn’t want to scream until his throat bleeds is when Chanyeol comes to visit, and he falls every night hoping that they’ll wake him up the next morning telling him he can leave.

He admits to himself that he does feel a lot better now that he’s taking anti-depressants and anxiety medication. Although, if he’s being honest, he didn’t really notice that there was something mentally wrong with him because just being around Chanyeol was like his own kind of drug.

At the end of the fifth week, they tell him he can leave with Chanyeol the next day, and he nearly yells with joy. He resists the urge to run through the center and yell, “Suck it, motherfuckers, I’m leaving, you’re not.” The only reason he doesn’t do it is because he’s afraid that they’ll make him stay even longer if he does.

When Chanyeol comes the next day, Baekhyun practically skips to him (and almost falls, because, he has to face it, he was clumsy enough  _ before _ he went blind).

Chanyeol signs him out, an arm around Baekhyun’s waist, and leads him out of the center.

Chanyeol sighs happily as they make their way to the car, and the two of them smile the whole ride home because, shit, they didn’t really realise that they were capable of missing one another so much.

Baekhyun laughs when Chanyeol takes him out of the car bridal style and carries him into the apartment complex, somehow managing to carry Baekhyun’s suitcase as well. When they get into the apartment, Chanyeol kicks the door shut behind him, sets Baekhyun on his feet, and kisses him.

“I missed you so much.”

Baekhyun playfully punches his shoulder and kisses him again. “When did you become so codependent?”

Chanyeol laughs. “God, I missed you.”

“So I’ve heard.”

After a few minutes of kissing and catching up with each other and just enjoying each other’s presence, something in Baekhyun’s eyes flashes. “Oh, I forgot! I have something for you.” He reaches down for his suitcase, undoes the zipper, pulls out a small canvas, and holds it behind his back. “Okay, so I don’t really know how good this is, but people kept telling me it was really good, and I’m very trusting, so.” He holds the canvas towards Chanyeol.

Chanyeol takes it, confused at first, until he realises that it’s a painting of him. And it’s almost exact. It reminds him of the unfinished sketch in the back of the drawing pad that Baekhyun had showed him. “How did you-”

“One of the therapists at the rehabilitation center was blind, too, and when I told him that I was an artist before the accident, he said to me, ‘You’re still an artist. You just need to readjust.’ And, as tired as I am of being told that I need to readjust, I had another artist there with me to help. And I just thought of that night where I touched your face, and we really kissed for the first time, and suddenly, after that, it just felt so easy.”

Chanyeol isn’t really sure how to describe the feeling in his chest, so he acts on it instead of trying to find the words, and Baekhyun’s lips part just before Chanyeol’s meet his, like he was ready for it. They kiss for a long while, and they hold each other, and they never want to forget this moment.

Later that night, as they lie in bed, Chanyeol brushes Baekhyun’s hair out of his face, and whispers, “I think I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” because he’s always been bad at talking about his feelings, but now feels like the right time to start trying.

Baekhyun grins, and Chanyeol can see it, even in the dark. “God, I’ve never wanted to hear those words so much in my life.”

*****

Every once in awhile, Baekhyun gets the craving for a cigarette, but he knows that it would make Chanyeol mad, and he wouldn’t be able to find them, anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> I think I might have a thing for rich, artist Baekhyun. Also, Baekhyun is my favorite to write. I cherish these two a lot.


End file.
